


Linger

by captainafroelf



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Black Character(s), F/M, Female Character of Color, Healing, Mutant Powers, Religion, Resolved Sexual Tension, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 13:52:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14717292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainafroelf/pseuds/captainafroelf
Summary: What does it mean if he comes and never stays the night?





	Linger

**Author's Note:**

> am i still a good writer? we'll see

Matt went to law school and did well but sometimes he couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag.

He wasn't sure what the worst part of it was, that she could argue circles around him or that she had a soft, nurturing voice that made her sound more disappointed than angry, but she was certainly angry. Her footsteps were harder and her teeth were gritting but he was hurt, all he could do was take it.

“You are a pain in my ass, Matt Murdock…” she grumbled.

She grabbed a washcloth and a basin of hot water to clean him up. The white basin was stained yellow now from the amount of times it held Matt's blood. Not that she noticed. She was a bit like a devotee that way, she could always turn a blind eye to that which would permanently rupture her faith. In other ways, she wasn't so devoted, he didn't ever want her to be, despite himself.

“Claire got Luke Cage and I got bloodstains on my fucking sofa. I'm lucky my ma don't visit anymore, I swear to Christ himself…”

She sat down in front of him and a rush of smells hit him. She smelled like cocoa butter while the basin smelled like blood. They mixed and the sweet suddenly smelled sickly and metallic, corrupted. There was a bit of him that knew it was his fault, and he was sorry, but sorry wouldn't cut it this time. “Le-Le…”

“ _Don't_ , Matt. I should drive you to a hospital. A real fucking one. I don't have a med degree, you know?”

“I know, Leah.”

“Oh, _have I_ mentioned that I'm not a certified nurse before? And yet here you repeatedly lay.”

Matt sighed. Again, she wasn't wrong. He focused his ears on her lungs. She was holding her breath, thinking hard about what to say to him.

“Exhale…” he said, quietly.

“Fuck yourself,” she exhaled. Matt was unaffected, but Leah still backtracked, she couldn’t help herself, she was a preacher’s daughter through and through. “I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. I just hate when you do that.”

“Not always.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. Inside her ribs, her heart stuttered under the weight of a lie she had no energy to tell. “No, not always. But right now.”

He looked in her direction. Picturing her in his mind's eye. She was on fire with the rest of the world, but she was different. Leah possessed piety like no one else he'd known. She feared God in every form. Sometimes praying to two at a time. She accessed the damages and sat at the appropriate altars. She feared what she couldn't see more than she feared any man, because whatever was up there gave her skin dark as onyx stones and a gene that made her a healer.

Matt saw her in the same fire as everyone else, but she wasn't burning.

“It's your birthday,” he said. “You were out celebrating.”

“Do you smell the booze on my breath?”

Matt nodded and shuddered as she cleaned him with a tenderness he really didn't deserve. “Where'd you go?”

“Harlem’s Paradise.” After she cleaned his wounds, she laid her hand down. It always burned him, a sinner being touched by the divine, but he knew that was just his skin and tissue coming back together. “I did a lot of dancing. I only drank one thing.”

“Not because of me, I'm sure.”

She chuckled. “Not yet… Nothing you’ve done has driven me there yet.” She was done all of the wounds on his torso, so he turned to show her his back. The otherwise clean alabaster skin was muddied with scars and a huge gash that’d only just missed his spine. Leah sat back and whispered a prayer. Matt heard her heart speed up for a moment.

“It’s not as serious as it looks, doesn’t even hurt that much.”

“You were a centimeter away from being paralyzed from the waist down,” she sighed. “But you’re right, it’s not that serious.” She shook her head and went to work healing the gash. “You and your nastiness.”

He groaned, swearing in his head. “It might be nasty but you've seen me through it all.”

Leah shot him a look. Once he was all healed, she stood up and went to wash her hands. This was usually the moment where he would put his clothes on and try to tell her what a good woman she was. She didn’t need it. She didn’t want to be praised for her kindness this time. “Matt, I've saved you from _dying_ and yet you come in like a hurricane, with very little thanks, before flipping out,” she told him. “Time after time, sometimes night after night, you crawl in here half dead and expect me to patch you up without a complaint.”

Matt rose from the couch slowly and went to gather his clothes, she heard him rustling, and he heard her take a quiet breath. “Do you have a complaint, Leah?”

“Don’t leave.” He froze. “You had a gash half the size of my hand in your back, close to your spine, you aren’t going back out there, Matt. Fuck that.”

“I have to…”

Leah scoffed. “Do you? Or do you just want to? You get a high from it, I know that. But you’re a human being, Matt. I can’t keep watching you try to be a bulletproof vest for the entirety of Hell’s Kitchen.”

He swallowed. “You.. You sound like Claire.”

“I sound worse, because I’m, for some reason, sticking by you. I shouldn’t, but I am.” She sighed, choking up. “Two ninjas showed up in my alley last night. They followed you and waited until after you left to attack me.”

Matt furrowed his brows. “Leah… Are you o--”

“I’m fine, I can handle myself.”

“I’m so… I’m sorry. I should’ve been there.”

“No, you never should have been _here_.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Do you want me to stay because you’re scared?”

She looked away from him. Around Matt, she kept her thoughts to herself, he was stubborn and nothing she ever said broke through his armor, but he stood there waiting for her answer, genuinely wanting to know what was wrong. She would be foolish not to be honest with him. “Not for myself.”

“I’m a little insulted, Leah, I can handle myself.”

“I don’t care. Those guys that came last night were scary, and they wanted me to tell them where you lived, they’re hunting you. I don’t care if you can handle yourself, Matt, you’re staying with me tonight or, on God, you’ll have to find another new night nurse because this is way more than I ever agreed to.”

He set his jaw and listened to her cross the room and wall down the hall into her bedroom. She opened and shut a few drawers with a huff. Anger and Leah didn’t usually mix, Matt felt afraid of someone for the first time that night.

He wasn’t sure what he was afraid of, or rather what he was more afraid of: Losing a healer or losing Leah. They were two separate things. They may have been one and the same when they initially met, but they weren’t anymore. Leah’s hands brought them together, but Leah was the reason he kept returning.

It was the sound of her voice in the dark that comforted him. Tender enough to soothe him, but never too giving. Her voice shook all the time around him. He wanted her to have that fear, but also wanted _her_.

It hit him, then and there, while he waited for her to come back to the living room. He wanted Leah so badly, he almost felt compelled to run to confession.

She returned with a clean t-shirt for him to wear with his underwear. Her heartbeat slowed down, she was calmer now, she just needed to get out of the room for a moment. “I know you love silk sheets. Luckily, that’s what I have.”

Matt’s eyebrow twitched and Leah sighed. “I can’t sleep in your bed, Leah.”

“You can, and you will.” Her voice was soft again, pleading rather than ordering. He would abide her request, she’d done so for him plenty of times.

“Thank you, Le-Le.”

“You’re welcome, just don’t… Don’t lie and just sneak off when I’m in the shower or something rachet like that. I want you to stay here and be safe with me.”

He took the clothes from her and put his hand on her arm. In an instant, her pulse spiked, her breath was caught. It was stupid, but Matt thought for a moment… That maybe Leah wanted him too. But he was probably overthinking it. Definitely overthinking it. After all that happened the night before, how could she?

“They could come here, Leah.”

“I know martyrs typically die alone, but if you die tonight you won’t be one. So you won’t be alone either.” She tugged away from him. “I hope you don’t mind smelling like lavender, that’s all the body wash I have.”

Of course, he knew that. It would cloud in the air around her. A haze of feminine, soft scent that wrapped around him and healed him just as much as her hands did.

* * *

 

When Leah was baptized, she feared she would drown. She was too young to care about ceremony, and far too afraid of water after watching Hamlet on tv. She closed her eyes as her father submerged her, dressed in white like an angel. She shook in his arms.

Water, these days, was her only real comfort. There was nothing a shower couldn’t fix. It even temporarily distracted her from the fact that Matt Murdock was sitting in her bedroom, waiting to shower himself after nearly dying for the countless time.

It was her father’s fault. He’d drilled it into her head. Galatians 6:9. James 2:26. James 4:17. Titus 3:14. Matthew 5:16. Isaiah 41:17. She had to help Matt, that was her calling. But her calling had become _complicated_.

She stepped out of the shower and dried off, enjoying the steam clouding the mirror. She tied her towel around her curvaceous body and walked into her room, where Matt was waiting patiently to use the shower. She didn’t look at him. She stayed in her thoughts.

Matt always found it remarkable how soft her footsteps were, it was as if she sunk into her carpet, weightless, floating through.

“I was talking to a guy in the club,” she confessed, with some hesitation. “He asked to come home with me and I said ‘No'.”

Matt wondered why she was telling him this, but he just listened to her rummage through drawers for pajamas. “Did you want him?”

“I did.” She wasn't lying. “But not enough.” She still wasn't lying.

“Maybe there’ll be another chance.”

She shook her head and slammed the drawer shut. The smell of her body wash wafted over him as she crossed the room. She didn’t want to get dressed in front of him, even if he was blind, she knew he could still vaguely, kinetically “see”. It didn’t feel indecent to be naked around him, it just felt like too much of a temptation.

“Father, help me…” she said, under her breath.

Matt got up and went to shower. He knew her home as well as he knew his own at this point, he didn’t even need her guidance to get around.

He showered with his forehead leaning on the tile. It had become too regular, him rolling into Leah’s home as if it were an infirmary, as if he hadn’t known her since they were kids. They barely spoke outside of these visits. She knew not to expect a phone call from the man whose life she continually saved.

He wanted to fix it, he just wasn’t sure how, he’d grown so used to the complicated business of keeping people at arm’s length for their own protection.

He stepped out of the shower and put his hand on the handle of her bedroom, then hesitated. She was in the living room, draping a duvet over the sofa to sleep under for the night. He could hear her humming a song she certainly didn’t hear in church. He rubbed his thumb along the knuckle of his index finger.

“Leah…” he said, in a voice that didn’t quite feel like his own, despite his feet making their way towards her. She stood up straight and turned to him. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

She knew, but she wanted him to say it. “For using you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Leah looked away from him. “No, you shouldn’t have, but I understand why you did… Why you do…”

He swallowed. A moment passed between them. Neither of them were quite sure if they would cry or walk away from one another. Leah thought she would do both, at first, but then she found herself wrapped around him.

It was a warm embrace, warmer than any blanket. Matt couldn’t bear to return it. He rested his head against her shoulder and let it linger.

“I haven’t been to church in years,” she admitted, with a bit of a chuckle. “But God, the first time I found you in that alleyway, after all this time? That was a miracle.”

Leah lifted his head up and kissed him on the cheek, and it was like striking a matchstick against a matchbox.

Matt paused and looked down at her, he took a hard breath, and tried to overwrite the part of his brain that couldn’t help itself. The part of him that was the Devil and the corrupted.

He couldn’t help himself.

He leaned down and kissed her, kissed her quickly, he didn’t let the moment last long enough for him to savor it. Savoring it felt like the downfall.

She gasped. It was small, it stayed in her chest. Her eyes doubled in size. Her lips tingled, reminding her that he was just there, he was just there and he was warm. There was a tenderness in his eyes, even if he couldn’t recognize it. He wanted this but wouldn’t allow himself to want it, and she appreciated that much.

But then he didn’t let go of her. It wasn’t until he was leaning in again that he realised where his hands were, around her waist, gripping tight to her shirt-- the only thing keeping him from melting against her skin, melting into her.

“Goddamn…” she whispered, with a nervous giggle.

Matt backed up. “No…”

“Matty…”

His heart skipped. “Leah, don’t. I- You have no idea what I just did.”

“Matt.”

“You shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have…”

Leah held his face in her hands and ran her fingers through his hair. “Matt…”

He closed his eyes. His lips brushed against her arm as it passed his face. “Leah…” He smelled it. Lavender, cocoa butter… He froze, and she froze, too. “L.. Leah…”

It was horrifying, visceral, the realization that she wanted him, too. He didn’t deserve it. None of it. None of it. None of it.

Matt turned himself away from her and walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind him for the night.

But he couldn’t sleep.

* * *

 

Leah was left behind and in her feelings. When the door shut behind Matt she jumped, releasing a long-held gasp. She licked her lips as if she could get whatever was left of him. It was so desperate, it was pathetic.

All she had to do was finish cleaning her apartment. She grabbed the supplies she needed to try and lift the stains from her couch, and she stood over it with her gloved hands on her hips.

Why did she even bother? She’d clean the stains and he’d come back with fresh blood to make new ones. Did she clean the couch with hopes that maybe he wouldn’t return and it would stay clean, stay pure, for just a few nights? Was this hopeless task all for the sake of giving him a new canvas to color? Was it repulsion or was it love?

She was overthinking it. All she had to do was clean. There didn’t have to be a deeper meaning or ulterior motive, she just had to clean and it would all be fine. The sooner she cleaned, the sooner she would be able to sleep this off, and Matt would be gone in the morning, as always.

She scrubbed the stains out until the couch just held shadows of the blood that was there before. It took a while to get there, but it was a necessary labor. She threw her gloves away and washed her hands, giving the couch time to dry before she laid on it.

Every inch of her skin that touched Matt’s was reacting as if it’d been left in the sun too long. It felt like he’d burned her, but it didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite. The burn felt warm, tender. It felt like the burn of a hot bath, ready to embrace her.

It was an itch she couldn't scratch on her own. No amount of self-love would relieve her, not this time. When it was just her and her hand committing the sin she was fine working with nothing more than her imagination. But now she’d had a taste of the real thing, and it was so much better than her damned imagination.

Leah sat up and took a breath. She closed her eyes. _Lord, if this is wrong, let me see the light in the morning._

She stood and quickly made her way towards her room. As she reached for the door’s handle, it opened, and Matt stood there. They both soaked in the silence, blood pumped in their ears.

He slowly moved forward, and she moved back until she hit the wall and Matt was so close that he could practically hear her muscles stiffen. He leaned in, nuzzling her nose with his own and trying to talk himself out of this or get her to talk him out of it. One night wasn’t worth losing Leah, but God help him he could smell how wet she was and she was only getting wetter.

Matt rubbed his lips against Leah’s, softly, a prelude to a kiss and a hesitant request, a request she honored by leaning in. She kissed far softer than he did, far slower. There weren’t any doubts left in Matt’s mind that he was pressed against an angel.

He pulled her back into her room and started worshipping her like an unworthy devotee. He wasted no time stripping her clothes off, laying on his back, and feeling every inch of her. He touched her places no man would’ve dared because they never got permission too. He did.

He grabbed her thighs and pulled them over his head. He thanked her for her grace and healing with his tongue and she responded, blessing him with moans of his name.

She smelled like cocoa butter, lavender, sweat, and lust. The lust overpowered all else as she rolled her hips on his face, bringing all of it closer to his nose.

He wanted her louder, he’d heard he sing in her father’s church, he knew she could be louder. He used a bit of force, spanking her, just enough to get her going. He wasn’t expecting it to work as it did.

“God!” she cried. “Matty…”

She needed to touch something, she needed to touch him. She reached out for it and he grabbed her hands, holding her steady as he gave her long overdue praise.

“Matt… Jesus… _Matty_ …”

He dipped his tongue in and she shuddered above him. He knew she was close before she did and was ready to taste her. Sweet as wine and twice as good for him.

She lifted herself up and clumsily landed in his lap. He smiled and reached for her face, kissing her again.

Leah pulled away for a moment and giggled. “You’re into spanking?”

“It’s not a Catholic thing I promise.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” He pecked her lips. “I didn’t bring protection, it doesn’t usually fit in the suit.”

“Your suit needs pockets.”

Leah climbed out of bed and pulled a condom from her underwear drawer. Then she mounted him again and slipped it on. Her heartbeat was the loudest noise in the room to him, fast but certain. It only became more certain as he slowly entered her for the first time.

Now she felt like the devotee. Calling out his name and God’s at once felt blasphemous, but the foreign act brought so much pleasure she didn’t care. He rolled his hips up slowly and it felt like something perfect, something complete.

Matt was careful and slow. He prolonged the pleasure as long as he could. They wrapped themselves around each other, joining bodies and minds. Matt inside of Leah felt like being on a drug. He could feel and smell and hear her so much clearer than he’d ever been able to with anyone else. He could feel the goosebumps on her sweat-slicked skin. He could hear the curses she kept under her breath between the loud declarations of how good it felt.

They shouldn’t have done this but they should have done it ages ago.

They got hungrier, more animal. Leah bit down on Matt’s shoulder so hard she definitely bruised him. His hand rested between her shoulder blades while the other moved between them and found her sensitive bundle of nerves.

“Good…” he whispered. “So good. So good for me.”

She cried out and her body froze and shook against his. She practically screamed against his skin. That was more than enough for him to finish, showing her she’d done to him.

They stayed still. Frozen in the moment, suddenly hyper aware of what just happened. Matt was overwhelmed with pleasure and with guilt. Leah’s soft skin trembled under his fingers. She stared at the headboard with tears in her eyes.

“L… Leah…”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Please, can we wait until tomorrow to have this fucking conversation?”

“I’ll be gone in the morning.” Leah sniffled and he pulled out of her. “It’s for the best, Le-Le.”

She watched his eyes well up with tears of his own. Her heartbeat rose again, but this time with sadness. “You won’t come back.”

“Leah…” She covered her mouth. “I can’t have you getting hurt for me.”

“Do I get a say?”

“You’ve said more than enough for me to know that I’m just endangering you…” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Leah, please stop crying.”

“I’m crying because I care about you and if you’re not here I don’t know where the hell you are! I don’t know if you’re out there bleeding to death where I can’t see or being tortured by some fucking lunatic underground somewhere… If you’re here and I’m helping you, I know you’re alive and I still have a friend.”

“I’m not the sort of friend you want.”

Leah looked down and wiped her eyes. “Fine…” She got up. “Can’t argue with a lawyer…”

Matt reached out and pulled Leah into his arms. “Stay.”

“Why should I if you never do?”

“Because you’re tired. I can hear you holding back a yawn.”

She settled into his chest. “Fuck yourself.”

She didn’t apologize that time, he deserved it.

* * *

The next morning, she woke up alone. The covers had been pulled over her, and the ghost of a morning kiss was on her cheek. She sat up and looked around the room. Matt seemed to have erased all traces of himself from the room.

Matt wasn’t a liar, why add that to his confession later?

Her heart hurt so bad she wanted to drown it. She crawled out of bed and pulled on her pajamas. She walked toward the kitchen, allowing the sun to peek down on her through her apartment’s windows. She needed to go outside, be in the daylight. Maybe later, right now she needed a drink.

The bottle of scotch was already out. She thought it curious, but poured herself a glass of it anyway. She took a long sip and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I thought it was out of fashion to drink before noon.” It wasn’t Matt’s voice. She turned and saw Foggy standing there. It was disappointing but she couldn’t help the relief. “Matt asked me to stop by, the door was open.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Enough to know how you feel.” Leah offered him the bottle. “No thanks, I have work.”

“Me too, you’re a much better person than I am.”

“That’s not what Matt says.”

“Matt talks too fucking much.”

Foggy laughed. “Maybe so…”

“Did he send you to tell me that he’s really never coming back to me?”

“I don’t know, he sent me with flowers though.” Foggy handed her a bouquet of white and pink flowers. “They’re not enough, are they?”

Leah grinned at him and took the bouquet. “Are they really from him?”

“They are really from him. He also said something about Song of Songs 6:4-5, said you would get it.”

She sighed and quickly recalled the verse. “You are as beautiful as Tirzah, my darling, as lovely as Jerusalem, as majestic as troops with banners. Turn your eyes from me; they overwhelm me...”

“Does that mean something?”

“I think it’s his roundabout way of saying he loves me…" She took another drink. "Thank you for coming."

Foggy knew how she felt, but he'd never felt it the way she did. Her pain laid on her face like a mask. When Matt spoke of her, he had the same pain, the same heartache. Daredevil was far too complicated to add love into it. Leah knew that, but she loved Daredevil. She loved the man in the suit so much that the thought of him never returning made her want to call out from work. 

He looked at the couch and ran his finger over a faint blood stain. "Jesus..."

"I thought about buying a red couch," Leah said with a chuckle. "Guess I won't be needing it now..."

**Author's Note:**

> SO i originally planned two chapters but i ended up liking it better as an angsty one shot so.... my apologies


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